These days we are besieged with discouraging news and information – probably more than we want, or ever expected.  This constant barrage may not only exacerbate realistic concerns, but can also activate pessimistic thoughts already lurking in the recesses of our subconscious minds. 

“As you think, so you become,” reads one Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) axiom. Years ago I attended a four-week NLP course for one glorious July in Winter Park, Colorado.  As I learned more about the impact of my thinking on my well-being, I departed with a determination to track my thoughts more consciously.

On my daily walks, I began a process of what my current yoga teacher calls, “minding the mind.” I was utterly astonished at how many negative thoughts I observed.  I had believed I was an optimist, but let me tell you I heard enough gloomy, internal voices in a 20-minute time span to keep a haunted house in business for years!

At midlife, one of the most important tasks is letting go of “stuff” that no longer serves you.  That literally means packing up those things that you don’t need any more and taking them to your favorite charity, or somewhere else. And it also means releasing those self-sabotaging thoughts that hold you back from creating a more fulfilling future.

A critical aspect of this process is awareness, which is why I began minding my mind on those daily walks.  Recently, I came across an NLP exercise that promotes such an awareness. You start by selecting a four-hour period in a day when you will be with people, or watching TV, and alone.  Find a slip of paper, or sticky note, and every time you hear, or see, a message with a negative tone (from either inside or outside yourself) put a slash mark on the paper. You may even feel this message as a tension or tightness in your body. 

These slash marks will help bring to consciousness the number of times negative thoughts are coloring your own map of reality.  I hope you find fewer marks that I discovered when I started minding my mind! 

I remain an optimist despite the massive changes I see on the horizon. In these challenging times, I find inspiration in the words of Abraham Lincoln:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.  The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.  As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”

Happy Halloween,

Bonnie 

Jonah Lehrer has written a fascinating article on such epiphany moments called “The Eureka Hunt” in last July’s New Yorker. According to psychologists and neuroscientists the “insight experience” has a few notable features. The first is an “impasse” where we feel blocked and unable to see our way out of a situation. (And haven’t we all had that experience!) Then, unexpectedly, an idea arrives, which provides a solution to the problem. And, finally, this “insight” is accompanied by a feeling of certainty.

Such was the case for me as I wandered through a prolonged midlife transition triggered by kids leaving the nest and job stagnation. While I was successfully employed as an Associate Professor in the Graduate School at Lesley College, I was becoming painfully aware that I no longer wanted to continue in this position. I was also unclear as to what I wanted to do next. On the one hand, I considered remaining in higher education in some administrative capacity and, on the other, perhaps moving into development work in the non-profit sector.

So I continued to teach and conducted an extensive series of informational interviews up and down the East Coast. After a year of such activity, I found myself meeting with a contact at the Carnegie Foundation in New York City. As our conversation come to a close, she said to me, “With your energy, you seem much more like the kind of person we would be giving money to, rather than a person who would be working for us.”

It was a true “Aha” moment. I knew, immediately, she was correct. (There’s that certainty element.) I promptly disbanded my exploration of the development world and narrowed my career search to higher education administration. This more limited focus helped me find my next job as Dean of Continuing Education at Wellesley College.

According to the New Yorker article, my brain must have been in a sufficiently relaxed state to absorb this illuminating clue about my future employment. Evidently for insight to occur, we must first focus our attention on a single problem. (I had been conducting informational interviews to explore job possibilities for a year.) Then, once our brain is focused, there’s a need to relax, because we cannot “force an epiphany.” (That’s why so many insights happen during a warm shower, according Jung-Beeman – a researcher on the nature of insight.)

So if you’re composing a new chapter for your life, be sure to focus on the task at hand using that logical, left brain of yours. Then find ways to relax and let the mind wander so your unconventional right brain can go to work on the problem and bring you moments of felicitous insight.

Since a drowsy brain is a relaxed one, one approach Jung-Beeman suggests is using an alarm clock to wake up earlier than usual, so you can lie in bed and ruminate, before a stirring household demands your attention. Now, I’m not an alarm-clock girl, myself, but if you’re feeling stuck in your present reality and this idea appeals to you, you could give it a try.

Happy Equinox,

Bonnie

You can imagine my excitement when I read an article recently in Harvard Magazine about an unexpected finding on myelination in the brain by researcher, Francine Benes. Myelination is the accumulation of myelin - the fatty sheath that insulates our nerve fibers and speeds conduction. (By the way, this article was published a few years ago - I just came across it.)

One of the basic tenets of my beloved Neurophysiology course was that myelinization (or myelination) was complete by about age 5-7. In fact, this axiom was so basic, I still remember it decades later. We were also taught that the active period of myelination in the human brain was accompanied by an amazing period of growth in children as they learned to walk and talk. Then myelination was all over by about the time kids entered Kindergarten or First Grade.

According to Benes, however, that basic tenet is simply wrong. Turns out, increases in myelination continue - she actually measured them. She discovered myelination rises during the teenage years into our early 20’s and then plateaus. And decades later, in our early 40’s (surprise, surprise), myelination takes off again and increases into our 50’s.

The area of the brain where this midlife myelination occurs is responsible for our emotions and memory, as well as for their integration. Small wonder we can start feeling confused and like a stranger to ourselves at this stage of our lives!

When I consult with prospective clients over the phone, they often tell me they want to explore who they are at a deeper level and to start living more authentically. This inward turning may be a natural companion to increasing myelination, according to Benes.

So if you’re experiencing some mayhem in the emotional realm at midlife and find yourself on an inward journey, you are not alone. And there’s a good reason for these new feelings - it’s biology. What a relief!

Happy August,

Bonnie

At the time I chuckled a bit, but the other day as I was reading The Third Age by William Sadler, I noticed he used the same landscape metaphor - with a very different take. He suggested that, “exploring midlife is like reaching the top of a mountain, thinking we have finally achieved our goal, only to find on the horizon an enormous expanse of unknown terrain.”

[As I wrote this last sentence, I culd hear the voice of my 10th grade English teacher reminding me that Sadler was using a simile not a metaphor. So I’m adding a mild disclaimer that I am using the word “metaphor” in its generic sense. After being so rudely interrupted by my inner critic, I will return to the topic at hand.]

There is no question that women reaching 50 these days have decades of living ahead of them. Probably this statistical fact accounts for the genesis of the popular cliché, “50 is the new 30.”

Sadler’s midlife vision of exploring “an enormous expanse of unknown terrain” is an exciting proposition, but, let’s admit it, a rather daunting one. Mapquest cannot help you find the correct route, nor will your GPS. If you want to navigate your life successfully in the years that lie ahead, you’ll have to map the territory with your own inner guidance system.

Accurate mapping requires a reliable compass, so I almost always start my coaching clients off with the Compasswise^TM Process, where I help them construct a personal compass, so they can use it to find fulfilling pathways for themselves.

So what about you? What new trails do you want to explore in future decades? And what will be your guiding mantra as you travel along? Certainly you can create a better one than “It’s all down hill from here.” It would be fun to hear from you!

Happy summer,

Bonnie

I loved science and still do, but deriving even an ounce of pleasure from writing would have to wait until graduate school when I was working on my dissertation. At least that experience taught me that if I kept the pen moving, I might discover what I wanted to say and that my jumbled thoughts could find coherence on the page.

So with this history, it comes as a bit of a surprise to see my words in print this month. I have a short (actually very short) story published in a book, edited by Marna Krajeski called Household Baggage Handlers: 56 Stories from the Hearts and Lives of Military Wives.

When Marna first asked me to submit a story for this anthology, I felt like a bit of an imposter, because my former husband was only on active duty for four years after college. But when she asked again, I thought, why not?

But what to write about? I decided to make it easy for myself and simply start at the beginning when Jim received his Ensign’s bars. Once I had completed the mandatory 1200 words, I was stunned to realize that in a period of six months I had: graduated from college, been married, driven from New England to Georgia, set up a household, lived with a man for the first time, applied for and accepted a job offer as a Lab Instructor at the University of Georgia, made a new best friend whom I drove to the hospital when she was in labor and become pregnant with my own first child.

I’m stunned as I examine this list of changes, but then I was only twenty-one going on twenty-two. What did I know about life transitions and the energy they require? Certainly the last thing I expected during that period was to be writing about it years later.

So if there is an aspect of your life you have been avoiding, watch out! Don’t be surprised if you find yourself called to it at a later date. It may be simmering on a back burner in your mind just patiently waiting for you to pick it up. There’s always more inside you!

Happy solstice time,
Bonnie

P.S. If you’d like to learn more about Household Baggage Handlers, click here

Believe me, I am no expert on meditation, but I feel content responding to this question out of my own experience. As you may remember, I embarked on a systematic meditation practice at the beginning of the year. I used a book called the The Presence Process by Michael Brown. He outlines an intense 10-week plan, including water immersion for a few of the sessions, which I actually followed. And if this approach seems to call you, by all means try it. But, in general, I suggest you begin meditating by just doing it.

Get yourself in a comfortable seated, upright position. [I’m not one for hard floors, or chairs, because “comfortable” is the operative word here and hard chairs, or floors are not comfortable for me. But whatever works for you is great.] And then you can begin your meditation by simply closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing. [Again, if you don’t like to close your eyes, leave them open, but do lower them.] As you begin to meditate, you can feel the air move across your nostrils and your belly rise as you breathe in and then sense your body relax and your belly fall as you breathe out. You can let the cares of the day float away, as you continue to breathe easily and relax more and more.

If you are like most folks, your thoughts may begin to wander, and your thinking may even move into the worry stage. Or some background noises may distract you. When you find yourself in the land of thought, or bothered by background noises, simply return to your breath.

As Eckhart Tolle says, in A New Earth,

“Being aware of your breath forces you into the present moment - the key to all transformation. Whenever you are conscious of your breath, you are absolutely present. You will also notice that you cannot think and be aware of your breathing. Conscious breathing stops your mind. But far from being in a trance or half asleep, you are fully awake and highly alert.”

Another question folks ask about meditation is how long should I do it? Why not start with 5 minutes a day for a week or two, and then move to 10 minutes, if that feels right for you. I meditate 15 minutes, twice a day, except when I don’t. There are monks who meditate 2 hours a day, and longer. Whatever works for you is perfect! In addition, I may also stop and meditate very briefly for a few minutes during the day, if my worry wheels start spinning. For me, meditation is very calming. I also find that items, which may have slipped beneath my radar come to my attention during my meditation, so I keep my planner handy.

Most importantly, meditation is a way for me to come home to myself - it just feels yummy. So if you like, why not give it a try?

Warmly,
Bonnie

P.S. Feel free to add to the comment box!

My success to date can probably be attributed to the support of my brain. Our brains are great friends in helping us carry out small-change intentions, because the more we do something, the more cells our brains assign to that task. I like to imagine that my brain is eagerly deploying more cells to keep me in that gentle, relaxed alpha state as a result of my daily meditation.

This kind of self-care pursuit is particularly important, if you‘re in the process of reinventing yourself at midlife. You may not know what you want to do, or what direction you should take, but you can be certain that it will be advantageous to exercise self-care. A methodical regimen, which provides a focus on yourself in order to strengthen your balance, wellness and quality of life, becomes an absolute requirement when you’re on a transformational journey.

Self-care can be exercised in many different facets of your life. For example, if having all your files properly organized creates a feeling of calm for you, go to it! (But be sure to begin bit by bit.) Or, if digging in the garden gives you a general sense of wellbeing, why not pick up a trowel on a regular basis?

A number of my clients run each morning before work to keep themselves “sane”, while others make time for creative work, like painting, that just plain “makes them feel great.” The nature of self-care is different for each individual, but if you’re in the midst of a busy life with the additional stress of a major change looming on the horizon, it becomes a real necessity.

Perhaps you would like to add a new self-care practice to your repertoire. If so, make it small, make it regular and make sure it‘s a practice that will add to the quality of your life. Remember your brain will support this kind of effort! Meanwhile, I’m headed for the garden to plant that Salvia Argentia I bought at the Organic Farmer’s Market yesterday.

Warmly,
Bonnie

For a successful midlife reinvention process, you need to discover who you are now - and that takes time. Then you need to develop a life direction that matches that person you’ve become - and that takes time. In most cases, you’ll need to “try on” a few life directions - requiring even more time. Then select the one that works for you - yet more time. And develop a plan for making the change in this direction to move your life forward- still more time. And then, yikes, more time to adapt and adjust to the new life you’ve created for yourself!

By now you may be getting the idea that any reinvention process will require a great deal of patience on your part - a very unfamiliar kind of patience, if you’re a “get-it-done and move-on” kind of gal. It may be useful to remember that in any transition, and most especially in the big one at midlife, we are dismantling old structures that no longer serve us. These are very familiar structures of mind that were built up and reinforced over decades. So, perhaps, it’s no surprise it takes more time than we might expect to take them down and rebuild in a new way.

A patient attitude and a good deal of compassion are your best friends during periods of transition. I’ve found that thinking of myself as a child just learning to walk is a useful tool. One-year-olds are thrilled with that first step. Then they fall down. Happily, no critical voice in their head comments on their performance, so they get up and try again. With seemingly endless patience they keep trying and eventually succeed. Usually parents and other relatives are standing by cheering them on.

This kind of encouragement is another important asset whenever you are trying to get from “here” to “there.” So if you’re reinventing your life, find yourself some cheerleaders who will lend you support and celebrate your progress. Why not talk with a good friend, or meet regularly with a group of women, or hire a life coach to focus on moving your agenda forward. Most coaches, like me, offer a free telephone consultation, so you can see if the coaching structure and the coach are a good fit for you.

And meanwhile, practice patience as you learn to love the journey!

(S)he that can have patience can have what (s)he will.
–Ben Franklin

Warmly,
Bonnie

The Rhode Island show featured a fairy tale theme, replete with a flowery wolf in grandmother’s bed, Humpty Dumpty perched on the wall of a gorgeous English garden and a fairy princess handing out flashlight wands to all the children - my grandkids loved these! In Philly where the theme was “Jazz it Up,” we entered the exhibition hall to the smell of spring and the sound of a New Orleans jazz band. If the swaths of spring tulips couldn’t brighten your spirits, the foot-stomping music of Big Sam certainly could.

The seasonal shift this time of year reminds us of the implicit order of all transitions. Winter has to come before spring. But at the end of winter, most of us hunger for any hint of new life. We want to see buds on trees, red on swamp maple branches, and bulbs poking up through the ground. We need hope that we’re coming to the end of a long, and sometimes lonely, period.

And so it is with all life transitions. In that liminal, in-between, stage, we become anxious for the new life of our dreams to arrive. We search avidly for any signs of its upcoming appearance. We weary of the long dormancy state that life transitions require – especially significant ones like the midlife passage.

It’s challenging to remember that a different kind of activity is going on beneath the surface, because we can’t see it. But without this quiescent period there would be no new life – no fields of daffodils and tulips. So we require inspiration to help chase away the discontent of our winter. And as far as I’m concerned a Spring Flower show is just the ticket! How about you - what’s yours?

Warmly,
Bonnie

Bonnie Leonard EdD,CLC

www.bonnieleonard.com
coach@bonnieleonard.com

That said, these authors have a point. Midlife is a pivotal period for many women, who are catapulted into a period of reflection and reevaluation, as they come to terms with their own mortality and seek new ground for the purpose of their lives. That was certainly my experience. At midlife, I found myself a little restless on the job and facing an empty nest as my younger son was headed off to college. I was also a bit weary after years of working full time, going to school full time and raising two kids as a single parent.

I mistakenly assumed my emptying nest was an insignificant matter, since I already had a busy career as an Associate Professor of Education. I believed I was joking when I told my friends that if my kids were leaving the nest, then so was I! True to my word, when my younger son headed off for college, I embarked on a sabbatical year where I lived in London during the fall semester, came home to join my sons for their winter break, and then traveled around the world on my own during the spring semester.

I was fortunate enough to receive a generous fellowship to support this remarkable adventure. Phrases and sentences in my application describe a woman in the midst of a significant midlife transition. At midlife I stand poised at the proverbial turning point with a Janus-like view of past and future. For more than a decade I have been simultaneously cultivating the fields of family, graduate study and profession. And now a confluence of events in my life and a quiet interior voice, to which I occasionally pay heed, are commanding me to stop and rest.”

And, indeed, that year turned out to be a one of extraordinary self-discovery and personal growth. My largest challenge, and one that came as a total surprise, was learning to cope with the almost existential loneliness I felt while traveling in the developing world. My homesickness was palpable for months, as I continuously explored strange lands, where I knew no one, couldn’t speak the local language and had no traveling companions. Happily, my homesickness gradually abated as I began to discover the real home inside me. By the end of that trip, you could plop me anywhere - even a tiny hotel room, surrounded by pink plastic walls, decorated with generations of crawling cockroaches - and I could manage!

Learning how to live on my own was the perfect preparation for the next stage in my life where I would not have daily contact with my children. While my sons would continue to live at the center of my heart, they would no longer be living at home to provide the orbital focus of my day-to-day plans and activities.

This trip around the world at the midpoint of my life turned out to be a journey of the soul where I learned for the first time how to move to my own rhythms and to listen more attentively to that “quiet interior voice.” It was an amazing leg on what I see as a life-long voyage of living into my authentic self.

Perhaps this seminal, midlife experience explains why I am so drawn to helping women reinvent themselves at this vital stage of their lives. Or, perhaps, I‘m just drawn to the wonderful possibilities for personal transformation this period of life presents.

So what about you? What experiences have contributed most to your own ability to become what Strenger and Ruttenberg call your “real self”?

Happy cogitating!
Bonnie

Bonnie Leonard EdD, CLC

www.bonnieleonard.com
coach@bonnieleonard.com